Rewards of Assurance
Rev. Joseph R. Reid
A preacher trained his horse to go when he said, “Praise the Lord” and to stop when he said “Amen.” The preacher mounted the horse and said “Praise the Lord” and went for a ride. When he wanted to stop for lunch, he said, “Amen.” He took off again saying “Praise the Lord.” The horse started going toward the edge of a cliff. The preacher got excited and said “whoa” “whoa!” Then he remembered and said “Amen” and the horse stopped at the edge of the cliff. The preacher was so relieved and grateful that he looked up to heaven and said “Praise the Lord!”
Why would a God who knows everything and has created everything want us to please Him? How can we be rewarded when we do? The truth is, we come to know God when we take the time to know who we are. We learn who we are when we can be alone with ourselves. I call it solidarity of oneness. There is no way to become one with God without becoming one with ourselves. In the Gospel according to Thomas, one of the lost books that did not make it into the Cannon of scripture, Jesus says, “Blessed are the solitary and elect, for you shall find the kingdom; and because you come from it you shall go there again.” This is a strange saying. It means blessed is the person who was divided but returns to who God created them to be. When we return to ourselves, we find ourselves and can become a child again. When we become as little children again, only then can we please God. When our need to be needed has dropped and we are completely content with whom God created us to be, our life becomes meaningful and we can do, be and have what God intended for our life. The problem is we are lost in a sea of forgetfulness and we don’t remember our original face. Some call it sin. It is only when we remember that face that we receive the rewards of reassurance that God promised to those who have faith strong enough to seek Him. There are two ways of receiving the rewards of assurance.
The first way is by living our life to please God. The Bible says, “And without faith it is impossible to please God.” Here is the beginning and end of our faith and here is the question too. Is what I am doing in my everyday life pleasing to God all the time? Again the Scriptures say, without faith it is impossible to please God, it is this kind of faith that helps us walk with God and have an active faith that lives in our heart. We cannot come to God unless we believe that he is, and that he rewards those that diligently seek him. We must believe that God is, and that He is what He is as revealed in our prayer, meditation and words of scripture. This is the faith that result in the solidarity that allows us to keep it together without outside help or the influence of the “others,” that can sometime dominate our life. It is this lack of faith that blocks us from the sunlight of the spirit. Only when we have faith powerful enough to please God can we really come to know Him for ourselves.
Another way we receive the rewards of our faith is when we seek God in Christ Jesus with all our heart mind and soul. When we find solidarity in God we become the elect of God. In order to find the assurance of God and experience the rewards of our faith we must seek him diligently; early, earnestly, and perseveringly. The Bible says, “Then shall they seek him, and find him, if they seek him with all their heart.” When we find God in Christ Jesus and are reconciled to Him, we will never repent of the pain we experienced in our search, we will have the rewards that only assurance in God can give.
